MOURNING
HIS SIXTIETH

Topics: Disappointment; Emptiness; Eternal Versus Temporary; Future; Limitations; Mortality; Old Age; Perspective; Reality; Seasons; Time; Transience

References: Job 8:9; Psalm 71:9; 90:12; Proverbs 16:31; 20:29; Isaiah 40:6–8; James 4:14

Bill Clinton was thirty years old when he was appointed attorney general of Arkansas. He was elected governor of Arkansas two years later, easily becoming the youngest person in the nation to hold that position. He was a youthful forty-four when elected president of the United States, and he still holds the distinction of being the youngest person ever to leave the office of president. In other words, the vast majority of Bill Clinton’s life and accomplishments were characterized by youth.

In August 2006, during his sixtieth birthday celebration, a melancholy Clinton reluctantly admitted that life had changed. No longer the youthful saxophonist wailing away on MTV, the white-haired former president said, “For most of my working life, I was the youngest person doing what I was doing. Then one day I woke up and I was the oldest person in every room. In just a few days, I will be sixty years old. I hate it, but it’s true.”

—“I’m 60 and I Hate It: Bill Clinton,” Breitbart.com (August 15, 2006)